Sunday, April 15, 2012

A is for Armageddon

Imagine if World War III was in full throttle, the Stars Were Right, and Ragnarok was competing for space in the the Book of Revelations. And then things get bad.

Angels, Demons, Gods of Myth, Psychics, Witches, Vampires, Martial Artists, and Cat people are a sampling of the cast that readers are exposed to as the setting unfolds.

Armageddon uses the Unisystem that CJ designed for his games, once he left Palladium. Its a simple Attribute + Skill + Advantage System = X, where X is added to the roll of 1D10. If that number is 9 or more you succeed. Its an elegant system that gets out of the way. Damage is either a Die multiplied by a number, e.g. D6 x 2 or the average of that roll or 6. It uses Hit Points. I'm a huge fan of Hit Points. Magic uses points, called Essence, to power spells. Psychic abilities is measured in Skill and Power. Overall, the system is like a lovechild of the Old World of Darkness, GURPS, Cyberpunk 2020/Interlock, & the Palladium system. The system has been used in WitchCraft, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Conspiracy X 2.0, Terra Primate, Buffy, Angel, Army of Darkness, and Ghosts of Albion. There are 2 flavors, Classic and Cinematic. Cinematic introduces Drama Points to help emulate the type of characters in TV and Fiction, allowing mundane characters to grab the spotlight next to supernatural characters.

I was lucky enough to playtest this game on AOL with CJ back in the day. It was alot of fun. I even went to Gen Con that year and had him sign the Myrmidon edition for me. I can't recommend this game enough.